


Unprophesied

by anonymous_yet_again



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (obviously-it's good omens), Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Crowley's Bentley (Good Omens), Dubious Consent, Footnotes, Harassment, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Plants, Religious Family, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23086930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_yet_again/pseuds/anonymous_yet_again
Summary: When Crowley and Aziraphale show up to the Dowlings' to be nanny and gardener, respectively, they are not ethereal or occult or anything but human, although they are still using fake names.  In fact, no one in this universe is anything but human (except, maybe, for Anathema, who at least thinks she's got psychic powers).  So why are these two hiding their identities, what's wrong with Adam Young, and what the heck is going on in Tadfield?____________________I never really saw the point of writing an AU (though I've enjoyed reading several) but then I wondered what would change and what wouldn't if these characters were fully human, and then I just kept getting more ideas and had to write them down.  This is very definitely book-verse because I've read the book and not seen the show, and because I have ripped entire lines from the book, but you don't have to read the book to enjoy it (I hope).  You should, though.Not beta'd or Brit-picked (except by me, an American who reads a lot of English books).NEW: Updates probably every 2-3 days (instead of weekly) because of social distancing and working from home!  Warnings (if applicable) at the beginning of each chapter.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	1. In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> A short chapter to start off, so maybe I'll post the next one in less than a week!

In the beginning, there was a bit of a mix up.

This is not, of course, the beginning of the universe, or the Earth, or human life that we’re talking about; it was, however the beginning of three different human lives who came into being one dark (because it was night) and cloudy (because it was England) night in Tadfield Manor, at the time the convent hospital of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl[1]. The mix up wasn’t exactly on purpose. It went something like this:

In one room, Mrs. Young, a middle class English woman, gave birth to a son--call him Baby A--while her husband, excluded by the nuns, smoked on the front porch. At almost the same time, Mrs. Dowling, the wife of the American Cultural Attaché, gave birth to her own son, as _her_ husband encouraged her via FaceTime, when he wasn’t putting her on hold. This will be Baby B. And in a third room, a young woman whose name none of the nuns had learned but who’d been found, very pregnant and unwell, behind a bus shelter the day before, gave birth to a third baby boy, Baby C, and slipped peacefully away during the process. What with three births and one death, the nuns were a bit strapped for nurses, so it was only one nun, Sister Mary Loquacious--a bit flighty but, the others quietly agreed, a good girl--who took all three babies to be weighed and such together, and returned them afterwards. Only, since all newborns look a little bit similar to Winston Churchill and a lot similar to each other, she gave Baby C to the Youngs, Baby A to the Dowlings, and kept Baby B to be turned over to the foster care system. So, the mix up.

Depending how much you believe in the power of nature over nurture, this mix up had absolutely nothing to do with the story to follow. Still, it was a bit odd. Maybe even ineffable.

***

Mr. Dowling, as soon as he got back to Regent’s Park from America, advertised for a nanny. Anthony Crowley, reading the advertisement in a newspaper, jumped at the chance. A fortuitous tube tie-up on the day of his interview--and, possibly, the fact that not many people searched for jobs in newspaper advertisements nowadays--meant that he was also apparently the only one to do so.

Crowley was the kind of person whose friends call him by his last name automatically. There is something inherently cool, among certain people, about being known by a last name and eschewing the first, and there was something inherently cool about Crowley. “Friends,” in most cases, was a bit of an overstatement, as well, and there is a certain level of distance that can be maintained when people use your last name only. In fact, though hazy memories suggested to Crowley that he’d had at least the normal number and closeness of friends all through grade school, by the time he hit university, there was really only one person who’d called him by his last name and yet somehow seen through the haze of coolness and distance that he’d tried to project and become a close friend anyway. And even that was distant history now, Crowley reminded himself, crunching up the long gravel drive to the front door of the Cultural Attaché’s residence and ringing the bell.

The butler was a surprise, but he really shouldn’t have been, Crowley reflected, as he was led through the maze of an interior to Mr. Dowling’s office. Crowley wouldn’t have said he was nervous, but this is because he was worse than he realized at analyzing his own emotions; although he was not, in fact, nervous that he’d do badly at the interview, because he knew himself to be competent and good with kids, he was carrying with him a deep and unreasonable fear that this entire thing would fall through, and he would be back where he’d been less than a week ago, with no prospect of escape to look forward to. This is why, though Crowley passed the interview easily, he emerged from it with sweating palms, an elevated heartbeat, and only the faintest idea of anything he’d said.

“Well, Nanny--” Mr. Dowling glanced back at the resume he was holding-- “Ashtoreth, I’ll just have my wife take you to see your charge!”

Crowley, wishing that he’d panicked less while trying to come up with a fake surname-- and why had he given himself a middle initial? What was the J even supposed to stand for?--followed Mrs. Dowling obediently down the hall.

Warlock--almost as bad as Ashtoreth, Crowley thought, but the poor kid was actually stuck with it--was asleep, so after they took a quiet look, Mrs. Dowling gave Crowley a flying tour of the house and grounds. The gardens, in Crowley’s not-entirely-amateur opinion, were beautiful, and he said as much. “You must meet our gardener,” said Mrs. Dowling, walking with him towards the small cottage that was about as hidden from the house as possible with the lay of the land. “He’s actually quite new, as well--just arrived earlier today, can you believe it?”

Crowley made a noise to suggest that he did, in fact, believe it, and then made another noise as they came around a bend in the neat path and the gardener himself, who was busy doing something with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, straightened up in front of them and tugged at his shirtfront in a very familiar, fussy motion.

“Oh, here you are!” said Mrs. Dowling cheerfully, not noticing Crowley’s strangled outburst. “This is our new nanny--”

“Ashtoreth,” said Crowley firmly. “Anthony Ashtoreth.”

“I’m Francis,” said the gardener, smiling beatifically, removing a glove, and extending a hand only slightly smeared with dirt. Crowley shook it, wondering what the hell his best friend was doing here, and why he was using a fake name, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1St. Beryl is that well known saint who prayed to God the night before her wedding, and woke up with the ability to chatter about anything and everything, or rather, the inability to stop. Actually, she isn’t particularly well known, or indeed, known at all outside of one small convent in Lower Tadfield. It’s possible that she was invented wholecloth by a group of slightly religious women who just wanted to live quietly and help people and knew that no one in their area would check up on them in much detail. Or maybe she was real. It’s hard to know.[return to text]


	2. The Heavenly Hosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out pacing updates when I already have several chapters written and the rest outlined is hard. Have another!
> 
> CW: vague discussion of religious family being unaccepting of a gay child (no specifics)

Most people, meeting Aziraphale Host for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than...well, the actual expressions had changed over the years, and these days people tended not to say it out loud, but Aziraphale had a shrewd idea of what they thought. His family had formed the exact same impressions, but it had taken them a little longer in the case of the third one.

Growing up, Aziraphale’s neighbors had referred to his family as the Heavenly Hosts, which wasn’t far off. He’d assumed for a long time that it was because of the angelic names he and his siblings sported1; it had startled him the first time he realized it was an insult.

The Host family went to church every Sunday--Catholic mass, to be precise, which didn’t scandalize their good old C of E neighbors so much as put them very slightly on edge. The Hosts sent their children to the local school, but continued their education with regular Bible study at home; they dressed like they came from a slightly earlier part of the century; and, although the Host parents didn’t seem to have any qualms about storing up treasures on Earth, they lived their lives mostly as though waiting for their heavenly reward or the end of days, whichever came first. Several of Aziraphale’s siblings were still leaning towards the end of days.

The thing was, Aziraphale still went to church every Sunday, or as often as he could. He’d explained it to Crowley, once, in university, late one night when they had both sobered up, but were both pretending to still be a little bit drunk. Free will, he’d said, meant that he’d been able to _choose_ church, even when away from his own controlling family. It wasn’t brainwashing if you still chose it, he said.

Crowley had said, what, do you still think blokes like me who don’t choose, or who choose wrong, are going to hell then? Shouldn’t you be trying to convert me, to save my soul?

Not necessarily, Aziraphale had told him. It’s ineffable.

Here was what Aziraphale actually was: himself. He’d gone through a nickname phase in grade school, and even called himself Ezra for about a week when he started university, but none of them had stuck, and he hadn’t really wanted them to. He was Aziraphale; it was just what he was called, by his family and his few but close friends, and nothing else felt quite right. He was religious; not thoughtlessly, by this point he’d questioned about every possible aspect of his faith, but he hadn’t been able to shake it. And he was unquestionably gay. He’d known that he was gay before he knew that being gay was a thing. By the time he found out that it was not only a thing but one his parents and siblings weren’t huge fans of, it was too late for him to even try being anything else.

This basic personal honesty was why it still felt very odd to be calling himself Francis, and disguising himself as a gardener.

***

It took about a week for Crowley to get any chance to talk to Aziraphale. Although interactions with younger relatives and friends (well, friends’ siblings), as well as a few steady babysitting jobs in secondary school, had given Crowley plenty of experience with children, he’d never actually been in sole charge of a baby, and was startled by a) how many fluids Warlock produced and b) how little Warlock actually slept 2 . Luckily, though his afternoons off wouldn’t really come into play until Warlock was a little older, Crowley did have a few days a month off worked into his contract, and on his first one, he walked down to the garden and found Aziraphale setting up a sprinkler. “Hello, uh, Francis,” he said.

“Anthony, my dear boy!” said Aziraphale, straightening up immediately. Crowley grimaced a little. “Perfect timing, I was just about to have a cup of tea.”

Aziraphale bustled around the cottage as though he’d always lived there. “Brother Francis,” the other staff had been calling him, and if it had been anyone else, Crowley would have gagged a little at the insipid, simpering religiosity of it. Instead, he was watching the so-called Brother put a kettle on, trying not to let his insides react to the way Aziraphale had called him “dear boy.” After all, Crowley reminded himself ruthlessly, it was how he talked to everyone.

“How long has it been?” Aziraphale asked once the two were sitting at his small kitchen table with chipped mugs of Earl Grey. “How are you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Crowley in response to both questions. This was a lie in both cases; it had been eight years, three months, and probably a few days since he and Aziraphale had last actually interacted, although it had been one year, two months, and about a week since Crowley had seen Aziraphale last. And Crowley was tired. Which, he realized, was a reasonable thing to be after waking up every time a baby did for the past week, so he said so. “Tired. What brings you here?”

“Well,” said Aziraphale, looking as shifty as someone as basically good as him could3. “A bit of a getaway, I suppose.”

“From the folks?” said Crowley, who was just tired enough to be blunt.

“If you must know, yes,” said Aziraphale fussily, but he didn’t sound like he really minded. “As far as they know, I’m on holiday somewhere; I couldn’t quite give up the bookshop.”

Crowley had been in Aziraphale’s bookshop once or twice, shortly after graduating. It was really more of a book storage place with an occasional “Open” sign. Aziraphale was good and nice and kind to many people about many things, but he hated actually selling his books. His family was rich, though, so he could afford not to. And now he had a job as a gardener, Crowley supposed, so that was probably a help.

“The plants look nice,” Crowley said, and realized that he’d been silent for at least a minute.

“Oh, thank you,” said Aziraphale. “Do you still, er, encourage yours the same way?”

Crowley had talked to his potted plants in college. It had been a bit of a joke. All these online articles said talking to plants made them grow better, so he’d taken it to the extreme in a rather negative way, verbally abusing them when they didn’t measure up, and once, memorably, taking a wilting spider plant4 and throwing it off of the dorm balcony where the other plants could see. If they’d had eyes. It had lost its humor some in the past few years.

“Nah,” he said. “Don’t have any here, anyway.”

“Of course,” said Aziraphale, finishing his tea, and taking both the empty mugs to wash up. “Feel free to talk to mine any time, although leave any discipline to me.” Crowley wished he still had his tea with him, so he could blame the slight choking noise he made on it. Aziraphale seemed not to notice. “I see you still wear your sunglasses indoors,” he said instead, facing the sink.

“Yeah,” said Crowley, slouching a little further into the seat. Wearing sunglasses constantly had been kind of like the last name thing, another way to seem kind of like a cool prick. After the multiple concussions, though, he did occasionally get light-triggered migraines, so they were useful for that, too. “Sometimes they’re useful,” he said. “Light gives me headaches, sometimes.”

“My dear boy, why did you never say?” said Aziraphale, turning to look at him. It took Crowley a moment to realize he was asking about before.

“Not then,” he explained. “’S a new thing. _Then_ I was just a prick.”

Aziraphale walked him back to the door of the cottage when Crowley went to leave, which seemed unnecessary to Crowley, but he didn’t argue. “Do come again, Anthony,” said Aziraphale. Crowley grimaced, but not at the trite 50s housewife phrase.

“Don’t call me that,” he muttered. “Please.”

“Ashtoreth, then?” said Aziraphale agreeably. “I seem to remember when Mrs. Dowling--”

“Nah,” said Crowley, who was avoiding eye contact even behind his sunglasses. “Crowley’s fine. I mean, when we’re, you know, alone. Just Crowley.”

“Do come again, Crowley,” said Aziraphale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Aziraphale had always been slightly jealous of Gabriel for having such a normal name, but he was not at all sorry he wasn’t Uriel.[return to text]
> 
> 2 To be fair, Warlock actually slept a great deal, but he only did so in two to three hour chunks.[return to text]
> 
> 3 This was a surprising amount.  
> [return to text]
> 
> 4 Crowley would never have told the other plants, but it was actually already dead. His options, as he saw it, had been to hold a funeral, or teach a lesson. [return to text]


	3. Mountain Moving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” --Matthew 17:20, NKJV_
> 
> _“It may be worth noting here that most human beings can rarely raise more than .3 of an alp.” --Good Omens (1990), footnote on strength of human belief_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, social distancing/isolation is a thing, and to help keep myself and whoever might read this sane, I'll probably update more like every 2-3 days, rather than once per week.
> 
> CW: more references to a disapproving and overbearing religious family.

Anathema Device was nine and a half years old, and she was reading a book, under the bedclothes, with a torch. It was a book that was about to change her life.

Anathema’s parents were not very religious1. Anathema _was_ religious, she just didn’t know it yet. Or rather, she believed, deeply and strongly, in something, and she had been doing a lot of reading lately to figure out what it was that she believed in. So far she’d rejected: Christianity, based on a single Sunday school class that her grandparents had brought her to; football, which was the closest thing to a religion that her father had; and the _Warrior Cats_ series, despite the group of girls in her class who had all given themselves cat names and a sort of tribal structure over the course of several recesses.

The book that Anathema was reading had already been in the house, on a shelf with her mother’s other research-related books (her mother was working on a PhD, and starting to figure out what her daughter’s name meant). It was a book of fairy stories; not fairy tales, but fairy (or rather, faerie) stories, i.e., people in Britain who’d encountered the fae. Mostly hundreds of years ago, but still. Anathema was enthralled.

The book mentioned witchcraft at a few points, and a small part of Anathema’s really very well-organized mind put this aside as another possibility. In years to come, she would believe in witchcraft; she would also believe in saving the whales, in tarot readings, in saving the Amazon rainforest, in burning sage, in indigenous rights in Australia and America, in acupuncture, and in clean energy. But the fairy stories would always be her first, and most rooted, belief.

***

Newton Pulsifer was eleven, and thin, and bespectacled, and he should have been in bed hours ago. His mother was letting him stay up to do one of his “experiments.”

Newton didn’t believe incredibly strongly in anything, but he hadn’t found that out yet. Right now he thought he believed in the power of computers, and he also thought that he was going to be an app developer when he grew up. His mother was convinced of his genius, and had bought him an iPod touch the Christmas before; however, she was also realistically convinced that she didn’t earn quite enough to support her son’s genius endeavours indefinitely, and had purchased a used iPod touch that had already gone through two owners previously. This was impressive because they’d only come on the market two years ago.

It could have been argued that it was the used qualities of this iPod that, when Newton plugged it into his computer2 and hit a button to try to download his latest app, caused it to spark, smoke, and then spontaneously combust, leaving a small charred rectangle and a hunk of fused metal and glass behind on Newton’s desk. It wasn’t the iPod’s fault, though. It was all Newton.

Newton beamed with pride. His last iPod, a classic, had exploded and taken out the light and several of his carefully and badly made model airplanes when he tried to improve its charging time. The destruction of a small area of his desk--and the iPod itself, of course--was a solid improvement. He pulled his _Coding for Dummies_ book, checked out from the local library, towards himself, and flipped a page carefully. He could, possibly, have looked up what had gone wrong on the Internet, but Newton wasn’t a complete idiot, and he knew that a book was a safer bet, at least for now.

***

Working for the Dowlings was a dream. A good dream, Crowley thought, having a certain amount of experience with things the subconscious can do while the body is sleeping. Crowley tried to tell himself it was the pay, which was not bad. He tried to convince himself that it was Warlock, who although adorable and growing more and more into an actual person instead of an indistinguishable baby, didn’t have much of a personality yet. He knew that at least a _little_ of the dream was the car that Mr. Dowling let him drive, so that was nice.

The Dowlings owned multiple cars, most of which were very new, and one of which was a Bentley that must have honestly been preserved from the 20s or 30s. Crowley did not actually know much about cars, but after the first time Mr. Dowling showed him the garage and where the keys were kept, he resolved very quickly to become an expert in one type of car, anyway. He suspected that the car had been updated sometime around the 80s, because it had a cassette player and was just safe enough that Mr. Dowling didn’t mind him strapping a baby seat into it and driving Warlock around. All of the cassettes in the glovebox, despite various covers, seemed to be _Best of Queen_ albums3, but Crowley decided that certain chunks of “Bohemian Rhapsody” were soothing enough, and it turned out that Warlock agreed, because he fell asleep to pretty much anything that got played.

So, the Bentley was one of the best things about this nannying gig. But Crowley knew what it was, really, that he was feeling. For the first time in years--for the first time in what felt like centuries, he and Aziraphale were seeing each other regularly, and they were doing so freely. It felt so much like a dream, sometimes, that Crowley kept waiting to wake up.

***

Aziraphale had first met Crowley on a dark and stormy night. As a matter of fact, it was the border right between a nice day and a dark and stormy night; Aziraphale, in his third year of university, had walked out of the academic building where he attended a weekly Bible study, tutted at the dark clouds on the horizon, and pulled an umbrella out of his messenger bag. At which point a thin young man all in dark clothes and wearing sunglasses had slithered around the corner without really looking, and almost ran into him.

“Sorry,” said the young man, once they’d avoided impact. He glanced at the clouds, too, and frowned. “Damn. Oh, well. Didn’t like this jacket much, anyway.”

Aziraphale glanced at the jacket, which looked quite nice but not at all waterproof, and frowned a little himself. “Do you need to go far?”

“Well, I live right there,” said the young man, gesturing at the dorm mostly lived in by first year students, “but I just left and I’d rather not go back right now. I’ll be fine.”

Aziraphale opened his umbrella, which was a nice one that folded up very small, but unfolded to quite a large size, and held it over both of them as the first few drops of rain began to fall. “Why don’t we go to the cafe?” he suggested. “I know it’s not quite cold out yet, but they have a very nice spiced apple cider this time of year.”

“All right,” said the young man. “Thanks, uh…”

“Aziraphale,” said Aziraphale. “It’s a mouthful, I know.”

“Anthony Crowley,” said the young man. “My friends call me Crowley.”

“Well, then, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, “this way.”

Crowley’s friends may have called him Crowley, but his boyfriend, Lucien, called him Anthony. It took Aziraphale some time to figure out that Lucien was, in fact, Crowley’s boyfriend. Lucien was closer in age to Aziraphale than Crowley4; he was blond and handsome and honestly not around very much. He had dropped out of university to start his own business, according to Crowley, and tended to be gone and apparently out of contact for long periods of time, before he would show up for a long weekend--or in the middle of a week, his schedule was unpredictable--and basically live in Crowley’s room for a little while. At these points, Crowley would all but disappear, and then emerge when Lucien was gone, looking an interesting mix of besotted and exhausted.

Aziraphale, for multiple reasons that he tried not to think about too hard, never entered any relationship at all. His family, who liked to pretend that he would find a nice Catholic girl someday, and who never asked him about his search for that nice Catholic girl because they knew very well how he would answer, gave him enough money once he’d graduated to open his bookshop, which he named A. Z. Fell and Co. as his last (he thought at the time) nod to the pseudonyms he’d tried as a youth5. Crowley came and visited regularly but not incredibly often--busy finding somewhere he and Lucien could live together, he explained. Still, every time he visited, they would pick up easily where they’d left off, as though the time in between had been a day instead of a month. And then he’d stopped visiting. Aziraphale had seen him a few times in the years since then, because London was large but somehow not that large, but every time, Crowley’s dark lenses had passed right over his old friend, and Aziraphale had sighed and continued on his way.

And then, ten years after Aziraphale had graduated, his family gave up asking about nice Catholic girls and started producing them: friends of friends, daughters of church families, even a girl that Aziraphale was very sure was his own second cousin. At first it was just when he went home, but then his brothers started visiting with their “friends,” all young, single, and female, and Aziraphale found he couldn’t take it any more. He’d announced that he was going on holiday, closed the bookshop indefinitely, packed up most of his gardening books, and gone to apply at the Dowlings’. And then Crowley had walked down the path towards him.

Aziraphale, besides being English and gay, _was_ very intelligent, and he had known Crowley for a long time, so he could tell that his friend didn’t quite believe in the sudden and complete renewal of their friendship. But despite his own intelligence, Aziraphale couldn’t exactly figure out how to tell Crowley this: he, Aziraphale, believed in God, and he believed in the inherent goodness of (most) people, and he believed in being himself, but for the last eight years, three months, and twenty-seven days, he had also believed quietly and incessantly in Crowley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Hence the name, which her mother had read one day and thought would be a lovely name for a girl. [return to text]
> 
> 2 A gift from his grandfather, it was a translucent turquoise desktop iMac that took up most of the aforementioned desktop. His grandfather had also given him three computer games, all on CDs, which only worked when the CD was in the computer. One of the games had so many levels that an extra CD was included, but Newton had never made it past the first one.[return to text]
> 
> 3 In fact, they had all started out as what the covers said, but they’d been in the car for the requisite fortnight or so. This tendency of tapes to morph into _Best of Queen_ is one of the few true facts sprinkled throughout the original _Good Omens_ by Mr. Pratchett and Mr. Gaiman, but it’s not much remarked upon these days because no one has tapes in their car anymore. One of the other true things is all the bits about Elvis. [return to text]
> 
> 4 This two year age gap never actually seemed like much of anything until Lucien was around. [return to text]
> 
> 5 Aziraphale had started seeming early-middle-aged around halfway through college, once he started carrying a messenger bag with an umbrella in it everywhere, just in case. [return to text]


	4. Angels and Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: After the ***, this chapter contains descriptions of past abuse (verbal and physical) and one very very brief reference to sex that is not explicitly non-con, but is definitely dub-con. Tags have been updated.

In the way of dreams, time passed both quickly and very very slowly at once. Crowley slowly started to gain sleep back, as Warlock slept through the night; then, somehow, the boy was three and refusing to wear anything except his Kermit the Frog overall. When Crowley and Aziraphale both had days off, they went places together, meals and art galleries and concerts; but when Crowley had an afternoon off alone, he would drop Warlock down at Aziraphale’s cottage, sometimes, where the man probably fed him religion and biscuits all at once.

“Bwuvver Fwancis says that I mus’ selfwesswy pwactice virtue and wuv to all wivving fings,” Warlock said as Crowley got him ready for bed one night. Crowley was usually an expert in interpreting Warlock-speak, but that one took him a moment.

“Did he tell you what that means?” said Crowley eventually, once he’d worked it out.

Warlock shook his head and shoved his thumb in his mouth, already eyeing the book of nursery rhymes in Crowley’s hand expectantly.

“Yeah, well, why don’t you wait a few years to figure that one out,” said Crowley, taking off his sunglasses and opening the book. “And Warlock--make sure you take care of yourself, too, OK? Like, put yourself first sometimes, yeah? That’s important, too.”

He was sure he’d used much more child-friendly language that Aziraphale apparently had, but Warlock already seemed to be half asleep, so Crowley gave up and read nursery rhymes.

When Warlock was four and a half, he stole Crowley’s sunglasses. To give the kid credit, he really just took them and hid them one morning, for a laugh, and then confessed as soon as Crowley missed them. Unfortunately, he completely forgot where he’d hid them.

“Right,” said Crowley, after the two of them had hunted around the rooms that they generally occupied for over an hour. “I’m taking your tricycle back, you little turd.”

Warlock looked reasonably worried, and Crowley repented immediately. The tricycle had been a fourth birthday gift from Crowley, and Warlock treated it with as much care and reverence as Crowley did the Bentley. “Not really,” said Crowley. “It’s about to be my afternoon off, though, so I _am_ taking you to your mum.”

Aziraphale had a break that day as well, so Crowley walked down to the cottage as arranged. By the time he reached it, the headache that had started during the search had magnified into the start of a killer migraine, no thanks to the brilliantly sunny day and Crowley’s total lack of eye protection. “’Lo,” he said, squinting, as he opened the door to Aziraphale’s cottage. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Crowley woke up in a dark bedroom that was decidedly not his own. Checking his watch1, he found that several hours had gone by. He had a confused memory of hurling into Aziraphale’s kitchen sink; of talking Aziraphale through the location of his migraine meds, back in his own bedroom; of sitting on the couch for a while with his eyes closed after taking the meds, waiting to see if he threw them back up. He had a not-at-all confused and very clear memory of Aziraphale’s hand on his back while he sat on that couch, and how the heat of it had felt through his shirt.

Crowley felt like he could sleep for several more hours, but he no longer had stabbing pains in his head, and in fact he was feeling the faint stirrings of hunger, which was enough for him to push himself up off of the bed and open the door to the rest of the cottage. Aziraphale was in the kitchen, poring over a few rather crumpled take out menus that he’d set on the table.

“Crowley!” he said, upon seeing him appear in the doorway, and Crowley suddenly wondered how he looked, squinting in the still-too-bright daylight, with messy hair and sheet marks on his face. Aziraphale didn’t seem to notice anything except the squinting; he jumped up and grabbed a pair of sunglasses, which were sitting on his counter. Crowley’s sunglasses, in fact.

“I went up to the house, and the Dowlings don’t expect you back till nine at the earliest,” he explained. “And Warlock found your sunglasses--he seemed very apologetic.”

Maybe it was a visual remnant of the migraine, or maybe it was the setting sun’s rays shining through the kitchen window, but Aziraphale’s hair glowed around his head like a halo as Crowley gazed at him. “Aziraphale,” he said, “you’re an angel.”

“Nonsense,” said Aziraphale. “Now, are you hungry? I thought we could order in.”

***

Lucien was much closer to being a demon than an angel. Crowley did not like thinking these things, because they were melodramatic and he didn’t like being melodramatic about his own life 2 . But he had to admit that it was true, or at least he had to admit it now. It had taken some time to figure it out in the first place.

Crowley could no longer even remember exactly how he and Lucien had first met. They’d been sort of part of the same crowd in secondary school, and then one night at a party Lucien had made out with him in the bathroom, and then they’d kind of been together. At first it had been pretty casual, at least for Lucien; Crowley certainly hadn’t been seeing anyone else, but he knew Lucien had slept with two or three other guys during that time. But they went exclusive when Lucien left for university. They’d spent the whole night together, right before Lucien left, and had talked about the future, and hadn’t slept at all. Lucien had said things like “I love you,” and “I’ll take care of you,” and “Just wait, our lives’ll be so cushy that we’ll hire people to wipe our arses for us,” and although the specific scenario had sounded a little weird to Crowley, the idea overall sounded spectacular. The Crowley family was not a rich one; when his father had too much to drink, he would mutter about royalty and the peerage, and make dark jokes about “crawling on our bellies in the dirt.” Lucien’s family wasn’t rich either, but he had ideas, and he was going to pull Crowley up with him. Or down, as it turned out.

In fact, Lucien was a spectacular business man. He made some investments into things like Apple right at the beginning of university, and when those paid off, he quit school and started working full time. Honestly, Crowley was never sure what exactly Lucien did, mainly because when he asked for clarification, Lucien said various versions of “Don’t worry your pretty little head.” But whatever it was, it worked.

University had been nice. He may not have been able to remember meeting Lucien, but Crowley’s first meeting with Aziraphale was burned into his brain for some reason. He figured out later it was probably because Aziraphale was so unquestioningly _nice_. Usually he had to earn niceness like that. Every time Lucien visited, Crowley fell in love all over again with his very fit body and his quick mind and his sudden and oddly timed but always heartfelt displays of affection. But then Lucien left again, to go to work and make them _both_ money, as he said, and Crowley found himself seeking out time with Aziraphale just for that niceness.

They didn’t find a place that suited them both--really, a place that Lucien was happy with--until almost a year after Crowley graduated. It took about three weeks after that for Crowley to figure out that Lucien was sleeping with his secretary, and two more months for him to finally admit it to himself and confront his lover. That was their first real fight. Crowley had practiced his confrontation in front of the mirror while Lucien was at work (he hadn’t found a job yet, and Lucien seemed pretty happy to have him at home). He’d gotten the tone down, and the disappointment; he even let himself imagine what to say to accept Lucien’s tearful and heartfelt apology. Then Lucien came through the front door, and Crowley brought it up, and Lucien exploded.

By the end of the argument, Crowley felt as though he was floating somewhere above his very calm-looking body. His body, meanwhile, was nodding, agreeing with Lucien; it was begging forgiveness for not being enough, it was promising to trust and to do better and be a better boyfriend so that Lucien wouldn’t need to stray. Then his body went and had make-up sex. By the end of the sex, Crowley was back in his body again, and almost believed what it had said while he’d been gone.

One month later, Lucien came home late with new hickeys that he didn’t even try to hide.

Oh, and he made Crowley stop seeing Aziraphale. Not that they’d been seeing each other all that often, but Lucien happened to be in Soho--for work, he’d said--one day, and saw Crowley and Aziraphale walking to lunch together. He didn’t confront them there, but when Crowley walked in the door to their flat that evening, he was waiting. It was odd, Crowley thought--during one of the rare times in those years that he was honest with himself--that Lucien, who cheated so regularly, was such a jealous lover. Mostly, though, Crowley thought back to the night that Lucien had first left, and the promises they’d made, and how far they’d come since then. He admired his houseplants, which he’d kind of stopped yelling at already by then, and his fridge full of gourmet food; he admired his white leather sofa, his television, and his top-of-the-line sound system, and he told himself that even without people to wipe their arses for them, Lucien was doing exactly what he had promised to do.

The first concussion was from an accident. Literally: Lucien had been driving them to a fundraising dinner for his company, and he’d been yelling because Crowley had been too slow to get ready, although it was actually Lucien who’d told him the wrong time, and then a lorry had taken a blind corner too quickly. Crowley’d woken up in hospital with a bruise the shape of the seatbelt across his chest and a splitting headache. Whiplash, they said. Lucien was in only moderately better shape, and very apologetic, even though the accident had been the fault of the lorry driver. Aside from the constant headaches, that had been a very pleasant month and a half of recovery, overall.

The next concussion was because Lucien shoved him into a wall.

Although the relationship had been headed downhill, it was the last year that finally did it. Lucien had always been physically controlling, in that he would put his arm around Crowley possessively, and put his hand on his arse in public, and just generally move him when he wanted him to move. But something snapped at the beginning of that year, and Lucien started actually shoving Crowley around, mostly just leaving bruises, but occasionally leaving more. And Crowley went along with it, mostly--because at that point, if you started at their first kiss, they’d been together for _almost twenty years_ \--and tried to figure out what he needed to change, to be better. And then, one day, when Lucien was at work, he went to spray his houseplants and realized that Lucien talked to him the same way that he, Crowley, had talked to his own plants in university. Which was when he started reading the classifieds.

Two months later, he was following Mrs. Dowling down a path in the garden, and came face to face--though he didn’t realize it at the time--with an angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 It was a very nice watch--it had been a gift--but it could not tell the time in more than one place.[return to text]
> 
> 2 Did he complain overly dramatically about things both large and small to Aziraphale all the time? All right, yes. But there was a difference between being dramatic out loud, and admitting in your own head that the drama was actually warranted.[return to text]


	5. Out of the Mouths of Babes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: use of the f word (the derogatory one) in a line that is actually pulled straight from the original Good Omens. Associated angst (not from the original book).

When Warlock turned six, Crowley realized that he probably didn’t need a nanny anymore. He said as much to Aziraphale, who was packing up his belongings in the cottage. Aziraphale had been making noises about leaving for a while now, missing his bookshop and book auctions and suchlike even though his family would be able to find him there. Crowley had been pretending that everything would be the same, but the combination of Warlock’s age and Aziraphale’s packing was getting to him.

“Are they planning to send him to school?” asked Aziraphale, taking a break to put on the kettle. It was summer, but Aziraphale drank hot tea--and hot cocoa--year round. “Because another possibility would be to get him a tutor.”

“Well, either way,” said Crowley morosely. “He’s a big boy--doesn’t need Nanny to read him to sleep at night.”

“You’re not telling me he doesn’t still _enjoy_ that,” said Aziraphale. “When you get right down to it, he never _needed_ to be read to in the first place.”

“I’m obsolete!” wailed Crowley, refusing to be comforted. He pushed up his sunglasses to better scowl at some of the boxes already stacked in the corner of the small kitchen.

“My dear boy,” said Aziraphale, “you’re not hearing me. _You_ could tutor him. Bring it up with the Dowlings.”

“That’s an idea,” said Crowley. He thought for a moment. “I can do some bits of history pretty well,” he said slowly, “and social studies. And I could get along in maths and science for a while. But he’ll need a literature teacher. And, um, art?”

“You know,” said Aziraphale, “I was just thinking, after working with my hands for so long, well, running a bookshop will be a bit tame, won’t it? I mean, once I get the cleaning and inventory and all up to date, I’ll need a hobby or a part-time job to pass the time.”

“Do you think the Dowlings will hire their former gardener as a tutor?” said Crowley.

“Be realistic, dear boy, they hardly even see me as it is,” said Aziraphale. “I’ll wear a bow tie and pretend to be my own brother.”

***

When Warlock was ten he liked baseball; he liked Transformers; he liked his stamp collection; he liked banana-flavor bubble gum; he liked comics and cartoons and the BMX bike that had replaced the tricycle. And his favorite subject was math.

Crowley supposed he and Aziraphale had done all right by the boy, as tutors. Once he turned ten, the Dowlings decided that they really did want him to be at school, socialized with his peers or however they put it nowadays, and Crowley had to accept that this probably made the most sense. Neither he nor Aziraphale were what you would call normal, and the kid probably needed some, well, other kids to be around. Honestly, though, even with their odd influences, Warlock had turned out almost disturbingly normal on his own.

Crowley had saved enough from his ten years of nannying to get a small flat near the bookshop, and he still babysat Warlock every now and then. He also got to keep the Bentley; Mr. Dowling, in the only fit of generosity Crowley had ever seen from the man, had called him into his office one day and said, “You’re the only one who drives that old car, d’you want it?” And they’d done the paperwork and the car was Crowley’s. So were the maintenance and insurance bills, but he thought they were worth it.

And now he and Aziraphale were sitting in the cafeteria of the British Museum, playing a game where they guessed how many of the people around them were actually spies. “No one but you wears a bow tie on purpose,” Crowley argued quietly. “His is obviously a camera in disguise.”

Aziraphale glanced at the man in question, and slid Crowley’s slice of cake towards himself. Crowley let him; at this point, he usually ordered dessert so that Aziraphale could eat it. “Ridiculous,” Aziraphale said. “That is obviously simply a man with good taste.”

“Hmm,” said Crowley, and finished his coffee. “You know, Warlock’s birthday is coming up.”

“Eleven years old!” said Aziraphale, with a sidelong glance. “Are you going to be there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Crowley. “Gotta run, actually, I’m going shopping for his present.”

“Well then,” said Aziraphale, sipping his own coffee slowly. “I think I’ll see you there.”

***

It was a hot, fume-filled August day in Central London.

Warlock’s eleventh birthday was very well attended.

Crowley eyed the seventeen small girls and twenty small boys, as well as the various large security guards in dark suits, and wondered when exactly Warlock had grown up. Not that he looked grown up at all, really; he looked like an eleven (recently ten) year old boy who was laughing at something his friend had said and planning to eat entirely too much cake, but that boy was so different from the three year old with the Kermit the Frog overall, or the almost five year old apologetically searching for sunglasses, that Crowley wondered for a moment if someone had done a switch. It was still Warlock, though. His hair still had the same double swirl at the back of his head.

The balloon animal man who was supposed to come was struck down with a stomach bug, and Crowley, who had been stuck at the back of the room talking jovially and inanely to Mr. Dowling about the Bentley, turned to find, to his horror, that Aziraphale had volunteered to do some magic tricks instead.

Aziraphale had always had a fascination with, and an utter inability to reproduce, stage magic. Crowley suspected that it was related to his family’s denunciation of anything resembling witchcraft, which had included the Harry Potter books, Penn and Teller, and most modern music[1]. Aziraphale had participated enthusiastically in a sleight-of-hand club in university, and Crowley had sat through four separate shows and watched every step of every trick, because he could _see_ every step, because Aziraphale was _very bad_ at hiding what he was doing.

He also seemed to have gotten all of his supplies from things around him at the party, and his idea of patter from a book written in the 1870s. “Now, young masters and mistresses, do you see this battered old party hat? Nothing in it, yes? But now--bless my britches, who’s this? Why it’s our friend, Harry the, uh, gerbil!”

“It was in your pocket,” said the boy next to Warlock.

Crowley squirmed with contact embarrassment as he tried to decide whether to distract the kids or Aziraphale.

Aziraphale was pushing on. “Does anyone have any such thing as a pocket handkerchief about their person?” he asked. Crowley, who was sure that Aziraphale was the only person in that room remotely likely to have a handkerchief, looked around wildly for a napkin.

The boy next to Warlock nudged him and whispered something. “You’re rubbish,” said Warlock, to Aziraphale. “I’d rather watch cartoons.”

“He’s right, you know,” agreed a small girl with a ponytail. “You are rubbish. And probably a faggot.”

Crowley froze, and was astonished when none of the other adults in the room reacted. Aside from Aziraphale, who had visibly flinched. “You know what!” said Crowley loudly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room--children, adults, and bodyguards, who deserved a category of their own--to him, and therefore away from his friend. “We should, uh--” He looked around again, grabbed a squelching handful of jelly, and got Warlock right in the chest. “Food fight!”

Under cover of the immediate agreement from the smaller members of the party, and the resulting rain of crisps and cream cakes, he made his way across the room, grabbed Aziraphale’s arm, and extracted them both from the room.

“Warlock certainly is growing up,” said Aziraphale, his face quite blank. Crowley discovered quite abruptly that for the past ten years--and probably before that--his own well-being had depended on Aziraphale’s ability to smile. No matter what had been happening in their lives, Aziraphale had always been able to smile at Crowley and mean it, and now he was trying, and it was more of a grimace. Crowley became quietly frantic.

“Warlock is a little shit,” he said loudly, towing Aziraphale to the Bentley. “Kids are--kids are little shits. Let’s go somewhere.”

“Where?” said Aziraphale slowly, pausing to brush some cream cake off of his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” said Crowley, “anywhere. I will drive until we find a picturesque town, and then we can stop and--and eat dinner.” And then come back, he thought. And you’ll run your bookshop and I’ll--live near you, I guess. And we won’t tutor ever again.

“Could we listen to this?” asked Aziraphale once the car was moving, holding up a tape from the glovebox that said “Tchaikovsky.”

“We could,” said Crowley, “but it’s _Best of Queen_.” They did, anyway.

***

It was a hot, silent August day far from Central London.

From a chalk pit hidden in a copse of trees and festooned with the trash of one generation and the spectacular playthings of the next[2] came the sound of voices.

“I tol’ you I’d get a dog,” said a voice that had something in it suggesting leadership. “Can do a lot, with a dog like that. He can go down rabbit holes an’ stuff.”

“If you catch the rabbits,” said another voice, one that suggested the owner was probably female, “you oughter eat them because if you just don’t then they’re traumertised forever. And killing things and not eating them is wasteful.”

“Raw?” said a third voice. It didn’t sound exactly opposed, just curious.

“No, Brian, you cook ‘em into rabbit stew.”

“I would eat rabbit stew.”

“You’d eat anything,” said a fourth voice, somewhat primly. “But we can’t cook rabbit stew, we don’t have a stove. And I don’t think even _your_ mum’d go for it, Pepper.”

“I saw online where some people in South America eat guinea pigs,” said the first voice. “I also saw how you should eat things that grow near you, it’s better for the planet.”

There was a pause as they digested--figuratively--this information.

“Like privet?” asked Brian, eventually.

“Stick insects.”

“I’m not eating a stick insect! They probably don’t fill you up much anyway.”

“No, I mean they eat privet,” said the prim voice. “I had seven pet stick insects once.”

“Did you name them _all_?” asked the girl.

“What’re you naming your dog, Adam?” asked Brian loudly, over the prim voice’s response. All of the voices quieted down quickly, waiting for an answer.

“I’ll call him...Dog,” said Adam, positively. “It saves a lot of trouble, a name like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 This last explained why Aziraphale still called any music from later than the 1940s “be-bop.”[return to text]
> 
> 2 These were, of course, the same things and included such artefacts as large sheets of corrugated iron, several dismantled wooden pallets, lots of bits of rope, and an entire Nintendo 64 console that none of the younger visitors to the chalk pit had discovered yet.[return to text]


	6. Like Lightning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” --Luke 10:18_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to all three or so of you reading this for the more spaced-out updates! I had quite a bit written when I started posting and I've still written ahead, but I'm getting slower on the last few chapters, partly because I've been distracted by other books (which is a bad excuse but true). I promise I won't abandon this, though.
> 
> CW: near the end, this chapter has verbal/slight physical harassment, and a panic attack. Here’s my disclaimer: I have never had a panic attack personally, but I have talked to/been with multiple friends through their own panic/anxiety attacks, which is why I wrote the bulk of this one from an outsider perspective. (Trying to warn without full spoilers, if you need more information, feel free to comment or message (if AO3 allows messages? I am new here).)

Many people think that witches work at night, which is only half right. There was a young woman in a dark cloak working on the hills surrounding Tadfield at the moment, and it was still daylight, though late afternoon; the work she was doing required her to be able to see, though, so doing it at midnight would have been a bit silly. Writing research papers in the middle of the night, though, was witchcraft that she could get behind.

The young woman’s name was Anathema Device. She looked mostly like a young woman with attractive features, and a little bit like a witch, since she was wearing that cloak, despite the heat, as well as several amulets. Also, she was acting oddly; she seemed to be kneeling in the grass and peering closely at something on the ground, taking notes in a notebook. After a few moments, she picked a few pieces of grass, and pressed them carefully between pages in the same notebook, before straightening up and smiling.

Anathema was doing research, but although she hoped to get a degree out of it, no one else knew enough about the exact subjects that she knew about to fully mentor her. On the one hand, she was looking for evidence of the fae; on the other hand, she was looking for native British plants and also what type of invasive species might have taken over in meadows across the country. She had written about 70 pages so far that connected these topics, as well as several others. She’d sent the pages to her mother, as well as her professors; her mother didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d only made it through the first 30 so far.

Anathema put her notebook in the basket of her ancient bike, wheeled it to the top of the hill, and paused. She was a very sensible girl in some respects, including the fact that she carried pepper spray and a set of brass knuckles on her keychain. However, she didn’t have a bike helmet, mainly because her bike could only reach speeds over four miles per hour on downhills like this one. Still, she could ride perfectly well, and everyone in the village was at home eating dinner at this time of the evening. And the cloak acted as a kind of slowing parachute, anyway.

***

Crowley was driving much more slowly than normal. They’d eaten dinner, and he was in no hurry to return to London.

“Reminds me a bit of where I grew up,” mused Aziraphale, looking out the window at the village houses they were passing.

“Sorry,” said Crowley, who knew a bit about Aziraphale’s experience growing up.

“Don’t be,” said Aziraphale, turning from the window to beam at him, startlingly. “It reminds me of the best bits--you know, Christmas morning, or summer vacations with only Bible study to worry about.”

Crowley, who was sure that Aziraphale’s Christmases had included much more church than his own, and who had never attended a Bible study in his life, grunted.

“Places like this,” Aziraphale continued, “well, they’ve always got their issues, of course, but really it reminds of the feeling of, well, the feeling of _love_ , I suppose, that--”

There was a screech, as of brakes, a crash, and a thud. Aziraphale blinked.

“You’ve hit someone,” he said.

“No I haven’t,” said Crowley. “Someone’s hit me.”

The bike was in worse shape than the Bentley, but more easily fixed. Crowley eyed the scratch in the paint on the bumper morosely, while Aziraphale picked up the bicycle and, with startling handiness, reattached the front wheel, which had come off.

“Ow,” said a voice from the ditch.

Crowley apologized for not turning on the lights; he’d thought the growing dimness was from his sunglasses. The young lady in the ditch accepted their apology suspiciously, and also accepted their offer of a lift.

Anathema watched the two men from the back seat as they followed her directions to the cottage she was renting while she did her research. There was something odd about them, but although she pulled her keychain out of her pocket and held it on her lap, she didn’t feel particularly like she was in danger.

The one in the bow tie who’d sat in the passenger seat came to help her get her bike out once they arrived; she’d thrown her notebook and things in the back seat of the Bentley, and they’d fit the bike in the trunk by re-removing the front wheel, and wedging carefully. The driver rolled down his window as she was wheeling her bike towards her front gate. “All good, Aziraphale?”

“Yes, dear,” said the one in the bow tie.

Well, that explained it. She _had_ been perfectly safe, after all.

***

Crowley dropped Aziraphale at the bookshop and then, still processing the events of the day, parked in front of his flat and went for a walk. He’d only lived in this part of London for a year, though he’d visited Soho often enough when he was still--well, allowed. But although he knew all the routes from the bookshop to Aziraphale’s favorite lunch places, he didn’t know the streets around his own house particularly well, so he wandered. He did try to stay in the bits with streetlamps.

“Anthony!” said a voice jovially from across the street, and Crowley felt as though every drop of blood in his face and jaw had turned to ice.

It was Lucien, because of course it was. On the same day that Crowley felt as though he’d kind of lost Warlock, grown up and away for good; on the same day that Crowley realized he was running out of excuses to hang out with Aziraphale, here was his ex-boyfriend, eleven years later, jaywalking across the street and--pulling him into a hug?

Crowley had seen Lucien once or twice since he’d run away to the Dowlings, but he’d always seen him first, too, and made a getaway. Now he was here, and Crowley felt the cold inactivity spread down from his head into his torso and limbs. Wasn’t that supposed to be one of the things you did: fight or flight--or freeze?

“Hello, Lucien,” he managed.

Lucien was exactly as Crowley remembered, only too well. He was not angry, or at least not that he showed. “You know, this is the first time I’ve seen you in a while without that old friend of yours,” he said. “Your plants are doing well, I thought you’d like that.”

“Ah,” said Crowley, and realized that Lucien had seen him with Aziraphale. Multiple times. This was causing some sort of churning feeling that he couldn’t identify inside his ribcage, but he still didn’t seem to be able to move outwardly.

Lucien put a friendly arm around his shoulders, and then let it slide down so that a less-friendly hand went possessively into Crowley’s back pocket. “It’s been a while,” he said, “but it’s nothing compared to how long we’ve been together. I know you’ve got a good explanation, right, Anthony? You’ll tell me all about it, right, Anthony?” Lucien had broken away from a group of friends to come to Crowley, and they were standing across the street whistling and calling for him to come back. “Come on,” said Lucien, as if Crowley had just walked out the day before instead of eleven years ago, as if he’d only stepped away from the group of friends out drinking--Lucien’s work friends, in their suits--for a few minutes.

With a huge effort, Crowley made himself move. He wrenched his body away from Lucien’s side. “No,” he said.

Lucien’s face twisted. Things happened quickly: Crowley’s back slammed into the rough wall of the building next to them, and then one of Lucien’s friends was there pulling him off and away. Somehow, in that short time, Crowley had plenty of time to smell the alcohol already on Lucien’s breath; he had time to think of all the things he wanted to say, but couldn’t, because Lucien was too busy hissing obscenities to listen; and he had a sudden, vivid memory of the first time they’d ever kissed.

Maybe Crowley thought all these things while he was still up against the wall, or maybe, actually, he thought them as he was stumbling through Soho, or maybe it was both, but he couldn’t be sure because one second he was watching Lucien get pulled back across the street, and the next, he was standing at the door to A. Z. Fell and Co.

***

Aziraphale was getting ready for bed when he heard the knocking on the door to the bookshop. At first, he was inclined to ignore it, but it was very persistent, and he grumbled as he made his way downstairs in just his trousers and untucked shirt; generally, wearing anything less than a waistcoat made him feel underdressed.

“We’re closed--” he started even as he undid the deadbolt, then: “Crowley!”

His best friend stumbled in, looking pale and uncoordinated. “Crowley,” said Aziraphale again, “what’s wrong?”

“I’ve gotta--Aziraphale,” said Crowley, pulling off his sunglasses. “I’ve gotta tell you something. Can I tell you…?”

“My dear boy,” said Aziraphale. Earlier that evening, he’d left off the “boy” and had wondered if Crowley would notice. “You may tell me anything, but let’s sit, please.”

Aziraphale was torn between staying in the back room and going upstairs to his flat, but Crowley went straight to the stairs and then just sat down on them, trembling a little. Aziraphale went and sat next to him and wondered if anything in all the books he had ever read had prepared him for this.

“Aziraphale, I,” said Crowley, and then paused, opening and closing his hands in front of him. “I need to tell you, I--Lucien wasn’t, he wasn’t, uh, good.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Aziraphale. He put out his hand on his own thigh, open, an invitation, and Crowley latched onto it with both of his own. “I know,” said Aziraphale.

“He was, he yelled and he pushed me,” said Crowley, and then he said some more things, but now the more he tried to talk, the harder he cried. “He, I gotta, he,” said Crowley around sobs, and Aziraphale twisted to face him as best he could, and, feeling as ineffective as he’d ever felt in his life, tried to coach his breathing.

“Deep breaths,” said Aziraphale, and, “in, out,” and at first it didn’t work, and then it sort of did, and Crowley was still crying but he wasn’t trying to say anything, or struggling to breathe.

“My dear,” said Aziraphale again, “what brought this on?” and then Crowley, sans glasses, was staring at him in horror.

“I need--I should go,” said Crowley suddenly. “I need to go home.” Aziraphale barely had time to stand up from the staircase, and he was gone.


End file.
